In the distance was the farmer working in the field who took great offense at my having taken the photo and he came storming down the road toward us, shouting angrily at us and at me in particular. Musa and Abdulai were translating. He was upset because I had taken a photograph of his field and I was going to use it to make money while he, this poor farmer had to do all the work and got nothing for it. When he finally got to the motorbike he quickly grabbed the key out of the ignition and proceeded to walk away from us.
Now Abdulai was angry because it was his bike and he could not convince the farmer to return the key. Musa knew the man somewhat and was trying patiently to explain the situation but to no avail. This took about 15 minutes and we decided to just let him cool down a bit and talk some reason into him but we were not that successful. Further up the road toward Kabala there had been a police ‘checkpoint’ and one of the Okada drivers (motorbike taxi drivers) passing by had told a policeman about the situation and he arrived to intervene,
He calmly listened to the old farmer rage about this white photographer who was going to make all this money from his hard work and as the farmer talked he gently took back the key. Then he let us explain and then told the farmer how fortunate he was that someone noticed his amazing field of cabbages and how he might take the picture back home and show people and who knows what good might not come from that. The settlement was 10,000 Leones. About $3 but I did keep thinking about the incident and talked to Musa later in the week. He had gone back to the farmer to bring some peace to the situation.
I did tell Musa and Abudulai that I had some sympathy for the man’s cause but they didn’t agree and saw him as a poor ignorant farmer. I was kind of humbled by the event actually and I wanted the policeman’s vision of things to come true. I do want the photograph to bring some good to this poor hardworking farmer. He did say during the angry conversation that he did not have enough money to buy seed for his next crop and I was wondering about sending Andrew G. who works for CES (World Renew) the development agency that works with farmers there to arrive one day with a gift for the cabbage farmer, just to show him that the photograph could bring good things to him as well.